Casually Composed

IF YOU DON'T KNOW a treble clef from an ampersand, don't worry. Beginner-friendly music apps make creating a simple song as accessible as playing a game. Your compositions will be modest—a short electronic loop that you can use as a ringtone, perhaps—but fun to marvel at, like a high score. "For me, writing music is listening to music," Philip Glass once said. "I don't think of it; I listen to it... It's not something that has to be imagined." Composing with these apps is similar: listen, adjust, repeat.